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Friday, August 22, 2014

Impressions #12: Dead Space 3

There are
great games that I can play over and over again. They do something so
right that it is just a joy to keep coming back. Others are merely
okay. Products like them are satisfactory throughout the whole of the
game, but they do nothing to stand out from the crowd and inspire
further playthroughs or thought on the game. Lastly, some cannot even
get that right. Games exist such that they are an absolute chore to
get through them. When one of these are found, playing them feels
less like entertainment and more like work. What follows is a
recollection of my experience with one such game: That would be Dead
Space 3, which I had obtained free of charge on PlayStation Plus
through their Instant Game Collection. I do not exaggerate when I say
that almost every element in this game has a massive problem
associated with it. Though I do not mean to say that it is the worst
game to ever be invented, I would say that it is a significant step
back in terms of modern game design.

The
first element I would like to throw under scrutiny was the combat.
Anyone who is familiar with third-person shooters will know how Dead
Space 3 operates. Enemies spawn in through the various vents and
openings, and up to two players shoot them down with whatever
weapon(s) they have equipped. Purely in terms of mechanics, the game
is functional. All the mechanics are there and they all work well.
The problem lies in that the game makes very few, failed attempts to
interject any form of variety into this combat. New enemy types do
show up from time to time, but they all use similar tactics. No
matter which form of space zombie or evil cultist is being fought,
the enemy will just attempt to swarm the players with sheer numbers.
Even though the cultists wield ranged weapons, their AI does not seem
to take that into account all too often when moving them into
positions on the battlefield. While enemies do have differences in
terms of damage taken/inflicted and movement speed, all of them will
charge player characters with reckless abandon. As a result, every
fight begins to blur into every other fight.

One way
the developers attempt to remedy this is by placing boss battles at
specific points in the campaign. Unfortunately, with the exception of
the final boss fight at the end of the game, all of these fights are
against the exact same monster. This creature, which I can only
describe as an “enormous mutant space lobster with exploding
tentacles” (EMSLET), ambushes players regularly throughout the
course of the game. EMSLET can be defeated by shooting it in its
glowing yellow exploding weaknesses until it dies. At the same time,
it will both repeatedly charge at the players and come with endlessly
spawning space zombies. Like the rest of the combat in this game,
EMSLET encounters begin to blur together after about the third one.
Considering there were plenty of opportunities to make new,
interesting boss fights to keep the game feeling fresh, this is a
very quick and lazy way to add content to the game. Feeling cheap,
EMSLET gives off the impression that the developers were pressed for
time.

Another
method Visceral Games used to inject much needed variety in the game
is by peppering both cinematic set-pieces and puzzles throughout the
adventure. One of the most used set-pieces is the rappel
climbs/descent on a vertical plane. Though not particularly
offensive, these segments do not feel like they add much to the game.
Usually, it is just another form of combat with some added
platforming segments built in. In my experience, other set-pieces
throughout the game had an uncanny tendency to result in a lot of
unfair deaths due to some fault in the way they triggered or
operated. Though I freely admit they tend to be quite visually
impressive, the number of glitches and poor design choices involved
with their execution ultimately made them more tedious than they
should have been.

As for
the puzzles, they do not really add much to the game either. In fact,
they generally cannot even be truly considered “puzzles”. Most of
them do not take more than minor brainpower and about a minute's
worth of time to solve. Though they try to break up the long slog of
fighting endless enemies, none of them last long enough to really
serve this purpose. Mostly, these segments serve as nothing more than
brief diversions, lacking in both challenge or substance.

Another
aspect that feels strange is the co-op. Unlike previous Dead Space
games, players have the option of bringing a friend along for the
ride. In fact, the only reason I even played Dead Space 3 was because
one of my own friends had asked me to join him for the journey. On
some levels, the game handles co-op well. Each character gets their
own instanced drops, separate from the other character. The benefit
to this is that players do not have to compete for resources,
encouraging them to cooperate rather than compete with each other.
Further, when a unique item is picked up by one player, a copy is
immediately placed in the other player's inventory. This way, neither
player can miss out on the items picked up. Also, the co-op
character, Carver, does feel integrated into the story in a way that
makes him feel relevant. He does affect the progression and without
him, the story would be quite different, but we will get to that
later.

On the
other hand, there are weird ways where co-op does not work quite
right. For example, there are times where when one player loses all
of their health, they are downed for a period. If not resuscitated by
their partner in time, they will die. This is fine, but there are
also other times where that period will not trigger, and the player
will instantly die. What separates instances where that time frame
will and will not activate was never made clear throughout the course
of the game. It always felt random. In turn, the mechanic itself felt
cheap and inconsistent. And while Carver is a character in its own
right, there are times when the game seems to forget this. In many
scenes, Issac Clarke seems to be ambushed and thrown into the next
area of the game by himself during a cutscene in a way that isolates
him from anyone else. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Carver pops
into existence right outside of view. Since my friend was playing as
Carver, this gave him an odd sort of whiplash when the camera
switched back to behind Carver after each of these scenes.
Ultimately, because of these grips, the co-op feels both imperfect
and incomplete.

One of
my least favorite parts of Dead Space 3 was the plot. Before I talk
about it, I want to admit that this is my very first Dead Space game.
All of my knowledge of the lore of the franchise comes from
second-hand sources, and not much of it stuck in my memory. For the
most part, I came in with not knowing anything about the finer
details of the story. Having said that, I do not feel that that was
the reason that I was confused about what was going on with the
story. Nor do I feel that the fact that I was playing in co-op was a
huge contributor to my lack of understanding. The plot is a nigh
incomprehensible mess, and at no point did I feel like I had a true
grasp of what I was doing and why. Considering how cookie-cutter the
whole affair felt, this is quite an achievement.

To me,
the game did not do a good job of establishing the cast of characters
and why they, in particular, are doing their part to stop the space
zombie invasion. Further, the interactions between characters often
do not make sense and serve only to add arbitrary drama and conflict.
One particular scene springs to mind when I say that. One scene has
the obviously traitorous asshole of the group betray Issac, turning
him over to the obviously evil religious cult at gunpoint. When Issac
Clarke kills him, he goes to his former girlfriend (who happens to be
the traitor's current girlfriend). She asks where he is, to
which Issac responds “I shot him”, without even attempting to
explain why. Scenes like this occur at multiple points in the game,
where characters behave illogically to push the plot forward. The
villains are as cartoonish as the come. Despite Simon Templeman's
incredible voice acting talent, the cult leader's entire character is
just the personification of silliness. Nothing he does makes any
sense, and he soldier's on with his beliefs despite all evidence
contradicting their validity. I remember joking that if the ending
was “rocks fall, everyone dies”, I would be happy with that
because every character in the game takes a turn at being stupid.
Nothing in this plot felt like it worked, and I struggle to
comprehend how people liked it enough to approve it for release.

As a
whole, Dead Space 3 feels disjointed and incoherent. For every good
thing that the game does, two more big mistakes were made at the same
time. Despite being a horror franchise, at no point could anything
ever be remotely considered scary. The only thing scary about it is
that it represents how EA's decision making can completely ruin what
might otherwise have the potential to be a good game. The
particularly observant among you might have realized that at no point
in this rather long piece did I even mention the weapon crafting,
microtransactions, and how they affected the game. That is because I
have decided to spend my next article talking about exactly that. I
look forward to sharing my thoughts on that with you.